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Who’s got it better than Toronto ratepayers when it comes to property taxes? Noooooobody.

Not those in the principality of Mississauga, led by municipal goddess Hazel McCallion.

Not citizens from the luxurious land of Markham, where councils routinely freeze taxes, thanks to the ongoing bump in new development.

Not the serfs in King; neither the farmers in Uxbridge nor the tax-challenged hoi polloi of Oshawa.

In every case across Greater Toronto, homeowners will be paying more property taxes than the whining masses of Toronto — a people so tax-pampered and spoiled that they have perfected the art of looking a gift horse in the mouth.

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Before you upchuck your morning brew, before you take to social media to query the sanity of such a statement, before you hyperventilate, consider that these are not the words of your correspondent. They are the sentiments of the city’s senior bureaucrats. And they are right.

Toronto property taxes will jump less than the rate of inflation this year. Add increases for education, and the Scarborough subway, and hikes for property reassessments and a tax shift on homeowners to help businesses and apartment buildings, and the hike is still less than 3 per cent.

The average Toronto homeowner will pay $3,612 in property taxes this year — all in, including education taxes — when city council approves the budget this week.

The amount will be about $1,100 below the GTA average, city manager Joe Pennachetti told council Wednesday.

Last year the average Mississauga homeowner paid $4,059 while the average Toronto homeowner paid $3,274. Taxes on a similar home were $4,548 in Ajax and $5,468 in Richmond Hill; $8,054 in King.

“The differential is about 25 per cent,” Pennachetti told council as they debated the budget. “We are the lowest of the low,” he said, pointing to a graph plotting taxes at 24 GTA municipalities.

Remember that the next time your local council rep, or mayor, or mayoral candidate, or Talk Radio yahoo rail on about the massive tax load being carried by the beleaguered taxpayer in Toronto.

In fact, there is no bigger or better deal out there.

City councillors may knock each other silly during debate this week — battling over whether to save households $3 a year or $12 a year on a nearly $10 billion budget.

Where else would $3,500 buy you so much security, humanity, entertainment, social cohesion and a battery of 24-hour public and emergency service — from parks to police to old folks’ homes — as it does in Toronto?

According to finance staff, the new budget — the one that will hike taxes on the average Toronto home by about $50 per year — contributes more than $1 billion to policing and about half as much for TTC and Wheel-Trans. (TTC actually spends $1.7 billion, but most of it comes from revenues, not your taxes.)

Student nutrition programs would now be available at 27 new sites. There would be more child-care spaces, money for the High Park Zoo once threatened with closure, funding for new firefighters and police officers. And a special levy for the Scarborough subway.

To hear some politicians tell it, Toronto is on the verge of fiscal ruin. And its citizens are so weighed down by irresponsible council spending that they are about to lose their homes.

One councillor — he’s too slimy to be given the dignity of attribution — raged during Wednesday’s debate that Toronto’s seniors stand to be ruined by the city’s budgetary increases. Staff reminded him that low-income seniors can appeal for budget relief from tax increases. He continued to rant, deaf to reason.

The truth is, for the past decade the city has been gradually squeezing the fat out of the budget. At first, the savings trickled in and council tapped reserve funds. The last three years under Rob Ford accelerated the savings, even though reserves continue to be used.

Lately, Pennachetti has been warning city council that it cannot continue to pass budgets below the inflation rate and not have to pay up sometime. That day is here, he warned.

Taxes at the “inflationary rate are not going to maintain services,” he said Wednesday. If councillors or mayoral candidates pledge to find billions of dollars in savings, they’re peddling an untruth, he said.

“We’ve had hundreds of millions of dollars of efficiencies and budget savings over a decade. We’re capped out,” he said. “Going forward, beyond 2015, council will have to consider greater than inflationary increases.”

That’s not the type of message any politician wants to hear, ahead of the October election.

So, expect them to ignore the fact that the decades-long tax honeymoon may soon be over. Instead, get ready for more promises of huge savings and tax shelters to soothe the burdened Toronto ratepayer.

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